Lost Luggage on Airplanes

Today, we discuss airliine passengers' lost luggage and a simple solution. In the 1920's, commercial airlines began carrying passengers in addition to packages and mail.

Our little planes began carrying a dozen passengers and "ramped up" quickly to planes carrying over 100. When planes carried only 100 passengers and had propellers, our airports were rather simple and people carried their luggage right to the "gate" where it was put on the plane that the passenger was boarding. When the gate luggage handlers places one's luggage on board, there is no way to lose it If a passenger had to switch 2 to 5 planes in the course of a day, the passenger carried the luggage from one gate to another gate and waited as that luggage handler placed that passenger's luggage on board that plane.

When that passenger needed, after landing, another airliner's plane, he waited to get his luggage from his plane's luggage handler and then, carrying his own luggage, he walked to the next airliner's gate and repeated the process all over again. He may have needed to wait in 5 lounges every major trip, giving and taking his luggage but ALWAYS being in control of it once on the ground.

I have no problem whatever, with the man or woman who feels it is cumbersome to have to haul luggage around many airports throughout one's travel day. It is cumbersome, time consuming and boring to have to wait at each gate to repeat such a process.

A reminder of the above-we have prop planes, a few million annual passengers, and a passenger that carries his luggage from gate to gate, staying in control of his luggage all the time the plane is on the ground. Thus, the amount of lost luggage per year; zero!

Why zero? Cause the plane and passenger are always tied together until the passenger walks away from the plane with his luggage. He spends 5 to 55 minutes extra a day losing nothing in personal possessions.

NOW we skip ahead 80 years. We have monster airplanes, 200x times the number of passengers and we also have -for the first time-lost luggage. And we don't only have one or two pieces a day of lost luggage but instead, 60 thousand pieces of lost luggage a D A Y!